Polly Dent Loses Grip (A LaTisha Barnhart Mystery) (6 page)

She snapped her compact shut and slid it and her cell phone into her purse. Her eyes raked over me like a lion sizing up its prey. Remind me not to get on her bad side.

“Are you the maid?” she asked.

Um-um-um. She was already on
my bad side
. “My name is LaTisha Barnhart. My mother-in-law is a resident here.”

She had the grace to look ruffled by that announcement and tried to coo herself back into my good graces.

“You just look so strong and capable, I thought you must be one of the women who help lift the residents and clean up after them.”

“My momma’s been here less than twenty-four hours, and I’ve already been thinking we made a bad choice.”

She flinched, crossed her legs
,
and started sing-songing in a tone that dripped sunshine and flowers. “Bridgeton Towers is a friendly community. I’m sure the residents will welcome your mother.”

“It’s not the residents that are the problem.”

She flinched again and, glory be, was that a flush staining her cheeks? I enjoy helping people get in touch with their conscience, but it was time to go easy. I glanced at her left hand, saw the huge rock there, and decided to make a guess at who she was waiting for. “You here to see your husband? I believe he’s
talking
with the police.”

Her eyes went wide. “Otis is. . .I thought I saw a cruiser out front.” She twisted and plunged her hand into her purse. “I just talked to him a few minutes ago.”

More like an hour ago, but I wasn’t going to say that, maybe she’d called since then. “He’s having a bad day.”

She tugged out a tiny cell phone and pressed a button that beeped a reply. The keypad glowed blue. “Poor Oatsey. He hasn’t left any messages.”

Oatsey? Where could I go to throw-up? Who did she think she was kidding? “One of the residents died. Polly Dent was her name.”

“Oh
.
”
S
he dropped her phone back into her handbag. “Happens all the time with these old people.”

So she knew about Polly? Or was that a blanket statement? Her crassness didn’t make me like her more. This woman needed to be shook so hard saliva would fly from her mouth. I appointed myself the one to do it. “I’m sure it does, but when murder is suspected, that puts a new slant on things.”

Her crimson lips rounded. “Murder!”

Just the reaction I was looking for. “They’re interviewing your husband right now. They’ll interview several people before it’s over with.”

She grasped the strap of her purse, knuckles white, face to match. “Otis would never do such a thing.”

More a question than a statement. How curious. “Some people are driven by things not easily seen with the human eye.”

A little gasp slipped through her lips, as if someone had just pricked her with a needle. She jerked to her feet, gathered her purse, and made a mad dash out the door and down the hall—toward the main entrance. You would figure a loving wife would rush to her husband’s side and vow his innocence. Maybe it was time to look into Otis’s alibi.

I stuck my head into the cafeteria on my way back
down the hall. E
ven if I couldn’t talk to anyone now, I hoped to catch a member of staff or someone who could answer my question about how the food for diabetics was
prepared
.

Nothing.

I did notice a separate room off the dining area. One I hadn’t
spotted
before. But this time, the lights on inside and the presence of blue uniforms helped draw my attention real quick-like. The table in the center of this room was crowded with two police officers, Dr. Kwan,
a woman dressed like a nurse
, and Otis Payne.

Chapter Seven

About two hours later, at the request of an officer, I escorted my quaking husband down to the cafeteria for his grand inquisition
.T
he smell of the roast beef from the evening meal still lingered. I tightened my arm around his shoulders. Poor sweet stuff. I knew how it felt to have the finger of accusation pointed in your direction. Come to think of it, Hardy’s the one that got that finger crooked my direction after I found Marion Peters. I almost stopped right there in the hallway and told him he had this coming for what he’d done to me when I found Marion performing the horizontal stiff. Hardy’s nervous shiver stilled my tongue before it could wag, so instead of
giving
a verbal assault, I pulled Hardy closer and rubbed the top of his grizzled hair. “Everything will be fine. You just go in there and tell the truth.”

The officers had moved out of the banquet room and now commandeered two tables in the empty dining area. Officer Harvey Rhinehald introduced himself and the officer at the next table over. Officer Dwight Eldridge sent Hardy and me a simple nod in the way of greeting. While Rhinehald’s rangy build and smooth skin didn’t inspire much in the way of presence, he had a nice voice. He gave Hardy a good-old-boy grin. “Just a few questions, Mr. Barnhart.”

Hardy didn’t look convinced.
As he sat, I took up a position right in back of him and lay my hand on my man’s shoulder, offering my silent support, before putting some distance between us and giving them the privacy they required for questioning. Of course, I didn’t move far enough away I couldn’t hear when I strained real hard.

“Now, Mr. Barnhart, Mr. Payne. . .you’d seen Mrs. Dent at one point. . .I understand that Mrs. Dent had an issue with. . .Is that correct?”

Hardy nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“Your mother. . .here?”

Another nod.

I humped my chair away from the table a couple of feet and dragged another chair closer so I could prop my feet up a bit before pressing back hard against the chair and cocking my head toward the conversation again.

We hadn’t the chance to talk about it, but I wondered if Hardy was doing some heavy second guessing about the safety of having Momma at Bridgeton Towers, like I was. We’d have to
discuss
it, and soon.

I caught most of the officer’s next question. “. . . to me how Mrs. Dent reacted to your mother moving in?”

“She was really uptight. Said it was her apartment. That Mr. Payne had promised it to her. I went down to ask Mr. Payne about that later on
,
and he assured me that Mrs. Dent was wrong, that her name wasn’t even on the list . . . ”

On and on the Q&A session went. Nothing new came out that I could latch onto. Hardy held up better than I thought he would. Innocence will do that.

I had more of a mind to pay attention to the table next to us when I saw Gertrude Hermann settling herself there. The officer gave her a warm smile and said something I couldn’t hear, which irritated me. Gertrude, on the other hand, came across loud and clear.

“I wanted to tell you that Polly Dent was my friend. We didn’t agree on everything, but she was a good soul.”

The officer consulted his notes.

“She doesn’t have any family,” Gertie continued. “Her and her ex-husband divorced years ago, he died this past summer.”

Someone banged on the doors to the cafeteria. “Gertie! Gertie, you in there?”

Officer Eldridge’s smile seemed a bit tight as he granted Gertrude permission to answer the door.

Another bang and Gertrude lurched to her feet. “Hold on, Mitzi, I’m coming.”

Mitzi didn’t seem to know quite what to do at the sight of so few people in the cafeteria, or the two uniforms present. Her eyes did appear more alert than during the solitaire game, but with dementia, who knew?

Gertrude sat back down, leaving Mitzi by the double doors to continue gawking at us.

Officers Rhinehald and Eldridge exchanged a look I couldn’t decipher. Rhinehald dismissed Mitzi’s presence and locked eyes with Hardy again. “Mr. Barnhart, do you have any reason to believe Mrs. Dent was not acting in a normal fashion?”

Hardy turned his hands palm up. “How would I know? I just met her this morning.”

Officer Rhinehald nodded and jotted something on the paper in front of him. “You’re free to go, Mr. Barnhart.”

Hardy bolted up out of that chair like he’d rubbed a splinter in his tail, belying the calmness I thought he had possessed during the questioning. Funny how after all this time together, he could still surprise me.

From the other table, Gertrude’s voice intruded on my thoughts. “Did you ask Mr. Payne about Sue Mie’s uncle?”

Drat it that I couldn’t hear the officer’s response. No matter how hard I strained, Eldridge’s voice didn’t register. Something else happened in that second. Gertrude slid a glance over at me. Not just any kind of glance, either. Believe me when I tell you I knew that look. I’d seen it umpteen times on the faces of my daughters as they savored some silly adolescent secret.

Hardy tugged on my hand
.
I gripped his hard and cut my eyes to him, hoping he’d tune in to the conversation and overhear something I couldn’t. Maybe it was time for me to get my hearing checked.

Mitzi’s walker clattered as she pointed herself in my direction, her feeble little body struggling behind the weight of the walker. What happened to the healthy, walkerless body she had earlier? I wondered if she’d spout off that crazy poetry again.

This time, though, she got so close to us I could smell garlic on her breath. She motioned us to lean in tight. “Not too nice. Little sugar, mostly spice. Since the death of mouse, a few months later and there goes her spouse.”

Chapter Eight

I lay awake most of the night, bothered by Mitzi’s latest poem. Was the woman simply entertaining herself with her little snippets of rhyme, or did they mean something? I had to make time and research dementia. What I needed was my house, my desk, my computer, the
I
nternet. In that order. Hardy wanted to see his mother settled in before we went back home, which worked for us since she had a second bedroom, but I was getting antsy.

I finally decided sleep was not going to happen, so I shoved myself upright, letting my legs dangle over the edge of the bed. Hardy didn’t stir. He slept like a dead man.

I checked on
M
omma, who also slept soundly, and went to her little kitchen area to rattle around for a cup. Minus my regular mocha mix, I’d have to settle for second best—warm milk. Problem. Momma didn’t have any milk in her refrigerator. Harsh reality settled on me in an instant. I was in an apartment with almost no food in the refrigerator, and only a handful of sugar-free snacks. How did people live like this?

Is this what I had to look forward to? I think I’d go crazy without a kitchen full of staples ready to be baked up at a moment’s notice. If I get a hankering for something, I make it. Simple. But not stuck in a place like this where everything was regimented. I closed my eyes, sadder than I’d been for a long time.

Looked like I’d be drinking water—cold or hot—at least I had that choice. I chose to sip warm water, satisfying my throat-aching thirst, jotting a list of the things I’d have to pick up at the store in the morning. Matilda loved her tea and would probably want a cup if she held true to the routine she’d developed while staying with Hardy and me during her recovery.

Those first few months, I’d cooled it with a splash of milk and watched as it spilled down her stroke-slackened mouth. Over time, she’d grown stronger, recovering some of her muscle control. It had been a terrible time for Hardy and me both. Mainly because it brought the whole I’m-getting-older thing into tight focus.

How would it feel to be a resident at an assisted living facility? To know the place you called home on earth was penultimate to your final destination?

I closed my eyes and leaned into the comfort of the recliner, pressing the warm mug to my lips. Waves of despair, brutal and sharp in their force, washed over me, not for myself, but for the Pollys and Matildas, the Gertrudes and Mitzis.

Stark in its oppressiveness, a thought jolted me. Suicide. Could Polly, irritated and disappointed after Mr. Payne’s news, have committed suicide? On a treadmill? The absurdity of the idea made me grin. LaTisha, honey, you’d better get a grip on yourself, thinking fool thoughts about little old women and treadmills of death.

Wide awake now, curiosity at full sail, I slipped into my clothes and palmed my room key. The hallways were wide and white, an oak banister ran the length of each side, about wrist height. I sucked air into my lungs in a rhythmic breathing that never failed to relax me, picturing the tension easing with each exhale.

On the main floor common area, a TV blared a rerun to its audience of empty chairs and stark walls, and one lone woman slumped in an oversize
d
armchair. As if my breathing somehow interrupted her sleep pattern, she snuffled awake, strange pale eyes staring a hole right through me.